to me it showed the desperation of Flower, who urged Strauss to accompany him to the Indian dressing room....to do this charade in the name of "sprit of cricket".

Desperate they became as they sensed that the match wasn't within their grasp then and it could be a turning point....an event that could turn a potential win and defeat......setting them back from their stated and publicized widely #1 objective.

DESPARATE they are to be #1 and wouldn't stop short of anything....is what it tells us

^ True Bell should not have been recalled. But to say that decision turned the match etc is OTT. When that incident happened, England were already close to 300 runs ahead. And with the way Prior, Broad, and co have belted our bowling, they still would have ended up with a lead of 400. We would have still lost heavily.

India - World Cup winners 2011!!!
Champions Trophy winners 2013!!!
Congrats to Indian team and all Indian fans!

but I ( and a lot of others sensed) that the spirit of the Indian team was broken...and they were ambling aimlessles after tea...conceding 200 runs in that session and anoher 100 in the hour next morning.

If Bell was gone then and Indian spirit not broken......we could have been chasing only 350.....whihc may have been a diffrent ball game

All players in the world are appealing for anything to out opposition player that time no questions in their mind is about Spirit of the game , only thing is win anyhow and any circumstances.
And suddenly situation demands them to behave differently then their mindset changes and lot of other thoughts occupied in the mind other than cricket. Mostly they are not trained to handle such situation and lose the focus in hand.
Same thing happened with Aussies after Sydney Fiasco, everyone wants them to behave properly and obliviously they don’t know what is that mean and they lost the next match at Perth.

If India could have restricted the lead to less than 400... we may have had a FIGHT on our hands...

Remember India nearly chased down 430 odd against Brearley's team in 1979....

In the end India may have lost the match... but chasing down less than 400 while surviving 5 sessions... was more doable than the IMPOSSIBLE target India were eventually set...it was UNFORGIVEABLE the number of runs India gave up post Tea...

AtulAll players in the world are appealing for anything to out opposition player that time no questions in their mind is about Spirit of the game , only thing is win anyhow and any circumstances.
And suddenly situation demands them to behave differently then their mindset changes and lot of other thoughts occupied in the mind other than cricket. Mostly they are not trained to handle such situation and lose the focus in hand.
Same thing happened with Aussies after Sydney Fiasco, everyone wants them to behave properly and obliviously they don’t know what is that mean and they lost the next match at Perth.

Once again Atul shows he could have made a good psychoanalyst or cricket captain... spot on!

Thanks Birbal . Not sure about psychoanalyst but I was captain of my college team but could not concentrate on Game part for Engineering ( Story of thousands Indians ) otherwise you would no have heard Bhajjs name

Martian, if England were bowled out for 400 or so...India would have had 300 odd to chase...And while it may have been difficult... don't think it would have been impossible...

I agree there were other momments that India also lost the plot... letting England score extra 60-70 runs... for last 2 wickets and not taking a bigger lead that 60 odd after pulling even with England only 4 down... both were important lapses...but the ANNHILATION of India in the post tea session was the worst I've felt about India Test cricket for a long, long time...

Yes, I agree.
India are the best team, by a wide margin.
You've been hard done by, cheated.
Denied your right, your divine right to be the world's number one team.
If you look closely you can see that Dravid's pads have been tampered with, this is deliberate ploy to get him caught behind when the ball flicks his pads and the cheating, desperate English appeal.
And, as revealed by the England captain, the English are all greasing the edges of their bats, deliberate ploy to deceive hot spot...and cheating Umpires.
India, the world's number one.

BirbalMartian, if England were bowled out for 400 or so...India would have had 300 odd to chase...And while it may have been difficult... don't think it would have been impossible...

This is the part I'm not comfortable with. Only few batsmen are capable of scoring in the fourth innings under pressure. Dravid, Laxman and to some extent Gambhir. Mukund, Dhoni & the tail can not put 100 runs together on board.
We can not even chase 250 without Dravid/Laxman scoring a 100. When they got out cheaply the match was over. Remember that none of our batsmen played a rash shot. The English earned every wicket. So we could have chased 300/350 is just hyphothetical.

"MS Dhoni's decision to withdraw India's appeal has since been lauded for the manner in which it upheld the spirit of cricket, and it earned him the Test Match Special Champagne Moment, among other less tangible plaudits. However, it was also the precise moment at which India's challenge in the series was extinguished, and in all probability, their hold on that coveted No.1 slot was surrendered.

Sometimes a team has to "create its own intensity". Those were the precise words that Andrew Strauss used to explain England's miraculous victory in Cardiff at the start of this English season, when 922 punters turned up to watch a wash-out against Sri Lanka, but were instead treated to a 25-over rout. Similarly, in an adverse situation at Trent Bridge, India needed something upon which to galvanise their challenge, and Bell's freak dismissal could have been the catalyst they were looking for. At 254 for 4 with the rock of their revival sawn off, England's lead of 187 suddenly looked less formidable."

The article says that criticism of Bell has been absent from the English media. I must read the wrong papers in that case, as all the ones I've read have criticised him. But hey, why let the facts get in the way?

AnilMiller, the English editor of CI echoes what Birbal has said here,
"MS Dhoni's decision to withdraw India's appeal has since been lauded for the manner in which it upheld the spirit of cricket, and it earned him the Test Match Special Champagne Moment, among other less tangible plaudits. At 254 for 4 with the rock of their revival sawn off, England's lead of 187 suddenly looked less formidable."

AtulThanks Birbal . Not sure about psychoanalyst but I was captain of my college team but could not concentrate on Game part for Engineering ( Story of thousands Indians ) otherwise you would no have heard Bhajjs name

Knew you had to have played competitive cricket at some point... which college did you play for? Was it in Mumbai?

thirdmanI watched this matched live on SKY when this happened - IAN BOTHAM said he would never had recalled a batsman were he the captain.
M HOLDING said the same thing.

This Bell character maade a mental mistake and he was out fair and square.

I would replace "My Foot" in the title to this piece (well written by the way) with "My A$$"

In the USA we get it on STAR network and they had a different team of commentators... Funny thing is that for a while they were showing the Sky commentary team... it seemed so dry and boring...and a bit snide and condescending to India... compared to the STAR team... but in the end seemed like the Dry Condescending Sky team was more in support of Dhoni's decision...than the self-loathing happy talking (That Harsha character really pi$$es me off)... STAR team...

When Ganguly responded to Nasser's constant needling, Harsha yelled out "what is it with you two guys having a go at each other all the time?" Of course he had nothing to say to Nasser, only at Ganguly's mild response.

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